Starpath Technology in Plastic Moulding - The Ecodisc Pathway to the Future

Toolcraft had the pleasure to work with one of our customers on yet another great project recently: ECO discs. These discs, made from a shine in the dark material, are great for use around driveways, around the garden or along roads. They need very little daylight to make them glow in the dark for 10 hours.

Our customer, Hamish Scott, MD of Nevana Designs, had been making his ECO discs by hand for some time. However, a huge order from abroad made him realise he had to rethink his manufacturing strategy.

Hamish came to see Toolcraft with a couple of kilos of his magic STARPATH technology dye. Toolcraft used their testing mould tool and mixed the dye with base materials polypropylene and nylon, in various different ratios. We got some pretty good moulding results, but we knew we'd get much better results with compounded material.

Hamish found a material compounder to do the job and all material testing, while Toolcraft designed the new ECO disc and project managed the mould tool design & manufacture of the tooling from our Chinese partner.

After 6 weeks, Toolcraft UK was ready to start production of the ECO disc in earnest and the first batches left us soon afterwards.